


What We Wrought

by ZoeBartlet



Category: The Handmaid's Tale (TV), The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Drama & Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-06-25 20:37:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15648498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoeBartlet/pseuds/ZoeBartlet
Summary: Nick and Serena desperately search for June on the morning after the attempted escape and Rita's arrest. Serena meets her match in the form of Commander Lawrence and is forced to confront their heated history. Nick finds June and they deal with the loss of Holly.Rated M for consensual sex, swearing, and mention of past rapes and violence.CHAPTER 3 IS NEW - June & Nick fight about HollyCHAPTER 4 IS NEW - June & Nick have anger/makeup sex





	1. Karma Baby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note that Joseph is for Commander Joseph Lawrence (his name in canon), not Joseph Fiennes. 
> 
> There are some cryptic pop culture references explained in the endnotes.
> 
> Happy reading!

4am:

Rita finds Nick in the kitchen an hour before they lock her up. “She didn’t leave!”

He freezes, “That’s not possible.”

“Nichole got out, that’s what they told me. June stayed. Her choice.”

It takes him a moment to process Rita’s words before he pounds his fist onto the countertop so hard he almost breaks his fingers.

  

 

 

10am:

“Well, well,” Commander Joseph says squinting into the sun as he inspects the woman in blue on his stoop. “Do I detect the smell of napalm on this fine morning?” he says cocking his head to the side. It’s been almost two years since their last sparring when he’d walked out of Pryce’s cocktail circle jerk honoring the final fall of the forty-eight. California had been a bitch.

Serena takes him in, skeptically, the unkept beard, glazed eyes. Howard Hughes, Jobs, Nietzsche, and a Hoarders episode all wrapped up into one graying, glowering mess of brilliance. He looks like hell and that pleases her. “Coppola was overrated.”

She remembered the reference and that's a small blessing, he decides. He’d made her watch it when Ellie was at the Basquiat exhibit at MoMA in '03. They’d played house for a blissful four days. He leans forward. “Don’t knock it. You and Kurtz are soulmates, S.J.”

She winces and ducks under his arm before straightening in the middle of his foyer to survey the walls. As he goes to shut the door Lawrence nods almost imperceptibly to Serena’s dark driver below.

Serena studies the Georgia O’Keefe, disapproving. “Where is your martha?” she asks. Commanders seldom answer their own doors.

“No clue. Setting fire your rose bushes, toasting smores, gossiping about wives?… Now  _that_  would be a par-tay.”

“You’re going to make this difficult.”

He leans back against the closed door and smiles, mocking her. It wasn't a question but he answers anyway. “Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. The better question is where’s yours?”

Anger always makes Serena stronger and she hastily removes her cape and gloves before remembering her finger. He notes her bandage but she quickly covers it with her right hand and pivots away. “She’s under house arrest,” she grinds out.

His eyebrows raise skeptically. Guardians are everywhere and always happy to haul anyone off to face punishment.

She glances at him over her shoulder. “Privately,” she exhales, trying to relax. "Locked in her room until we can figure this out.”

“Good fuckin’ luck with that, Serena.”

She lifts her chin defiantly. “Joseph, you’re going to get all of us killed.”

He chuckles as he moves directly in front of her fixating pointedly on her finger before his gaze meets hers, his expression turning serious. “Karma sucks, Mrs. Waterford.” She wrote Gilead’s penology, after all.

She holds his stare for a moment before looking away and then downward. “Can we not?” she says quietly, exhausted by the last two days.

He softens. Damn, he’s missed her, her pride, her composure, even her twisted logic. “C’mon,” he grunts leading her into the the sitting room.

She takes in the thin layer of dust and inhales the musty smell, carefully placing her cape on a nearby chair. Sitting primly on the loveseat she absorbs the degenerate art. They’d argued about that, back in the day. She’d preferred the Royal Academy Victorians, he relished the Postmodernists.

They sit opposite each other.

He watches as her good hand goes to the back of her neck, rubbing briefly and a flash of long-dormant desire awakens in him. Grace Kelly had nothing on Serena Joy.

“I need a drink.” He stands abruptly and rounds the sofa to the bar as he tries to remember her libation of choice. Illicit sex and passionate fights are all that come to mind, as history goes. He hesitates, “I'm fresh out of mimosas. G&T?”

She smiles derisively. “Really, Joseph? Scotch. It was always scotch.” His possible senility gives her pleasure. They’re finally equals in a way, she thinks, and he pours two, their fingers touching briefly as he hands it over. Instead of sitting he makes his way to his album collection and puts on REM because she’d always hated it.

 _Losing My Religion_  starts blaring from the circa 1985 speakers and Serena downs half her scotch in one gulp. “Subtle, Joe.”

Pleased with himself he sits and regards her closely across the coffee table. “Yeah, well, Carrie Underwood was never my bag.” He leans back casually resting an arm on the back of his chair. “Hey, fun fact, didn’t your crowd shoot her in that protest after you deleted her savior?”

He’s baiting her and Serena sighs. Conversation with Joseph was always exhilarating and exhausting. “Kill or be killed, Joseph. That’s what you always said.”

“Yeah, well, it was Yale.  _I_ , for one, never meant it literally.”

Her lips twitch remembering his disgust for his dean  _and_  the student radicals  _and_  the press - contempt for the establishment and anti-establishment all at once. In any case, she knows her economic philosophers. _“‘Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.’”_

He laughs outright. “Jesus saved humanity, Serena, with mercy for whores and lepers and adulterers, and you killed him. It's like revisionist biblical Girls Gone Wild around here.” He holds up his glass for a mock-toast. “Here’s to you and Judas one day sharing a stiff scotch in hell.”

She hesitates but continues anyway. “ _‘If you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine.’”_

He chuckles and exhales, almost bored at her predictability. “Genesis?”

“Exodus.”

 _“‘Those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities.’_  Right back at you.”

“Lennon?” It was a good guess. He was a devoted fan and a one-time garage band stoner. 

“Voltaire, Serena. Keep up.”

She shifts with discomfort and looks at the books on the table, devouring the words from afar. Eventually, she places her glass down and clears her throat, trying to get back on track, “And how is Ellie?”

He looks upwards toward Ellie’s bedroom before gazing down, tapping his watch. “It’s ten. Sleeping off the Percocet and cabernet, probably. Some things don’t change.”

Serena looks to the side for a long moment and finally at him. “She is your wife, Joseph. Your first love.” Eden, and even Ellie and June were weighing heavily on her mind and she nudges some tendrils of hair into her bun.

He broods into his drink. “Yeah, well, I loved you more.” Her fidgeting stops. He leans back and studies her over his glass and deflects to avoid any real intimacy. “Speaking of sloppy seconds, how's Sir Frederick?”

_Sir Fredrick._

_Sir Fredrick? You’re seriously going to marry an MBA who's biggest aspiration in life is a fuckin' Thomas Pink tie? He's got a room temperature IQ, Serena!_

She’d recalled those words every single time Fred’s idiocy was displayed over the following fifteen years. Joe had uttered them mere days before her graduation at the New Haven Sheraton. He’d offered to leave Ellie that night, in the wee hours, but she wouldn’t consider it. The goodbye sex was the best she’d ever had.

The pause is deafening despite the blaring music. He finally stands and dials down the volume.

It’s time to do business and she gets to the point, “Where is she, Joe?”

“Sweet, sweet Serena Joy, wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Joe, we will all end up dead.”

That pisses him off. “Yeah, you’re right, Serena, because you and your Leo B. branding bone-head husband created this hell on earth. It’s probably where we all belong.”

She places her glass down and stands. “I will not stand for this hypocrisy, Joseph. May I remind you that you,  _you,_ published the model that made Gilead possible!”

He’s calm, alarmingly so. “May I remind you that we -  _together_  - were constructing economic and social incentives for fertile women to  _willingl_ y procreate.”

Serena averts her eyes. “I had nothing to do with The Ceremony.”

“Yeah, that was your husband’s wonder-child, pun intended because it's the only child he'll ever have. That man makes Don Draper look like fuckin' Betty Friedan. What the hell actually happened to you?”

The brewing rage begins to erode her composure and her voice lowers to a warning. “You know exactly what happened to me,  _professor_. Econ 101 is where you found me. I was eighteen and you were forty-two and you dare, you  _dare_ to question why we need faith and morality in this country?”

He’s got no defense for that and walks to the bar for another drink, pouring the amber liquid and circling it in his glass while staring at the velvet Victorian wallpaper overlaid with illegal art. Eventually he takes the bottle and moves to stand in front of her. She reaches out her glass without looking up as he fills it.

The grandfather clocks ticks from the corner. Finally he reaches for her bandaged hand and carefully weighs it in his.

“I’m sorry,” he says. She’s not sure what he’s sorry for - there were so many transgressions from which to choose. He leads her back to the sofa and they sit beside each other.

It takes a while as his eyes dance over her features. “Seems like old times.”

“Joseph, we have work to do,” she says.

He smiles because it’s classic Serena. His best student. His taskmaster. His muse. It could be Yale in repeat... But diplomacy has its machinations.

“She’s safe, Serena. I’ll keep it that way.”

“Fine, but we need an explanation, Joe. Something righteous that we can sell to Gilead.”

“This place has nothing to do with what is right. You know that, S.J..”

She leans her head back, the two scotches kicking in.“You never believed in Him. In His divine benevolence. That was always the problem.”

He chuckles. “God is just the fur coat dressing up your need for power... and you know it.” He leans into her and trails a finger down her long neck as his voice lowers to a whisper. “And it’s hot as hell.”

That’s how Nick finds them, Commander Lawrence looming over Serena, maybe about to kiss her.

“Mrs. Waterford?”

Lawrence and Serena abruptly stand to face him.

“Tell me where she is.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- The Napalm quote is adapted from _Apocalypse Now_ , and is about loving war. Kurtz committed egregious war crimes and is known for the quote: "Horror has a face and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared."  
> \- “Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps” is a reference to an iconic Doris Day song also known as _Quizas, Quizas, Quizas_.  
>  \- Jean-Michel Basquiat was a Neo-expressionist painter who challenged power structures such as racism in his paintings.  
> \- Carrie Underwood sang _Jesus Take the Wheel_ and, of course, she's alive and well IRL :-).  
>  \- Lennon is obv a reference to John Lennon  
> \- Leo B. is for Leo Burnett, a storied advertising firm.  
> \- Serena’s mercy quote is by the economist Adam Smith.
> 
> Btw, Bradley Whitford is older than I thought, 58, and Yvonne is only 36 so it demanded a "May-December" scenario.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	2. One Eye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick is led to June... and he's pissed. 
> 
> Also, Lawrence's martha (Cora) deserves a chapter shout out, right?!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this has taken a while to update! Reason: Late summer busyness and then I recently read all the other amazing post S2 finale fics and got weirded out b/c many of us had the same ideas.

Nick finds himself skirting the hedges of Lawrence's property led by the crazed one-eyed martha. They crunch their way through the refrozen snow, dead weeds and naked trees, occasionally hiding behind carriage houses and sheds.

He inhales the late-winter chill and thinks _this is absolutely fucked_. Hell, it’s broad daylight.

Miles later he relaxes a fraction, relieved June's not at Lawrence's, or even near him. It would be like hiding in plain sight in the stupidest possible way. But, at this point, he wouldn’t put it past her.

_Jesus fucking Christ. She was almost out._

After an hour of oddly routed turns, crouched dashes across tennis courts and well-manicured shrubbery, the Gilead-imposed monstrosity smiles cynically up at him after they emerge from the trees. It's a desolate field. In the distance is an aging, once proud collection of buildings. He’s pretty sure it was a boarding school before Gilead. Around Concord, maybe. He'd driven the commanders everywhere... There had been so many schools, before.

She stops, looks him up and down, in the one eye. He awaits instructions. He’s a patient man if nothing else.

"She worth it?”

It takes a second to understand but then he exhales, almost laughs, and looks to the silver horizon. “Not the best time to ask.”

She snorts, almost wistful, and eventually points toward the church-like structure in the distance. “Down the ravine, through those bushes, under the elderberry, pull the chain."

He nods but pauses. “Wait. How do I know it’s elderberry?

“You look.”

“I’m from Detroit.” His tone is flat, almost mean, but still trying to show respect for this creature who may have been a heroin addict, or professor, or Michelin rated chef - _who the fuck knows?_

Turns out it doesn’t matter.

"Dumb fuck, guardian. Figure it out."

And then she’s gone. He smiles despite himself. _Fair enough._

It takes twenty minutes of scrounging through the ice and shrubs and, apparently, an elderberry bush before he finds the chain. He tugs on it once, twice, until anger finally takes over and the adrenaline kicks in. _Fuck this shit._

That does it.

The door, maybe once part of a farm, probably pre-existed the school, he thinks, but it finally budges. It's a cellar. He descends the steps and just stands there in the blackness before he remembers he has a phone and turns on the light.

She’s there. Just... there. In the dank air twenty feet away.

“Hey,” she says.

_Hey? Fuck that shit._

He lifts his phone up, blinding her with the light, almost like a punishment.

“Where the fuck is Holly, June? And why are you here?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Question: Why is everyone saying Nick is so hard to write? I find him SO much easier to write than June. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Don't worry, Chapter 3 is almost done. There's smut so that always takes some work. Give me a week, max.
> 
> Also, this is a weird fandom wrt comments. I invite all kinds of feedback (fans and critics) and only screen b/c it seems to be the norm 'round here.
> 
> Thanks for reading!!!


	3. Sparks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The big fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always been interested in June's motives wrt Nick. There's definitely strategy at play in addition to lust/love/romance and I decided to just go there. The relationship is SO awesomely soapy in canon that fic-ing it almost felt like overkill, but I love a good fight.

June squinted into the assaulting light from the phone, Nick's glare equally piercing, and she held up her hand in front of her forehead to deflect it. After a long moment, he dropped his arm, casting shadows around them.

She turned her head into the blackness and exhaled, searching for the strength to face this raging music. Finally, she met his eyes resolutely, “She’s out safe, Nick. Lawrence told me.”

He shook his head, incredulous, conveying a kind of injury and betrayal she never imagined she could inflict on another person. Then, for a brief second Annie's face flashed through her mind and she sighed heavily - what she'd wrought, indeed.

“I couldn’t leave her, Nick. I couldn't.” 

 _“So you left Holly, instead?!”_ He exploded with rote fury she had never before seen from this contained man. He jammed one arm over her head against the wall, blocking her, his face inches from hers. “She's a tiny baby, June! _Yours!”_

Her blue eyes flashed back with her own rage. “Was she mine? _Really?_   You _know_ she wasn't!” and she pushed at his chest, trying to get him out of her space, meeting his anger with conviction, both of them on equal ground.

He took a step back from her, afraid where this could go, visibly trying to calm himself. “She could have been,” he whispered and his hushed tone almost frightened her more than his volume.

“It was a fantasy, Nick. Maui. ‘ _What we could be,_ ’" she said referencing his words weeks before. “ _You know that_.” She wiped her face and her tears before crossing her arms in a gesture of self-protection, her gaze dropping down.

His mouth opened, then shut, amazed at this direct hit. He had lived for that fantasy, and she knew it. He took a shaky breath, trying to restrain himself from punching the cellar wall. Eventually, he nodded slowly as cynical comprehension washed over him. “So, you’ve been playing me. All along.”

Her head shot up. “ _Oh, fuck that, Nick_! You’re an eye. In case you hadn’t noticed, this is Gilead not a Nicholas fucking Sparks romance!”

He paused, his head rearing back. “This is _complete bullshit_ , June. No mother does this. In case you hadn't fuckin' noticed, you don't have either kid now, probably never will!" His hissing words came out in daggers. “What the fuck do you think your _husband_ will think when Ofjoseph presents him with Waterford’s baby?”

“ _Her name is Emily!_ ” She was screaming.

“Great, he scoffed, utterly amazed by her illogic, "so, clitless, road raging _Emily_ is our baby’s caretaker. Child services is gonna fuckin' love that. Are you _actually_  fucking serious?”

She stiffened and brought herself up proudly, nodding. “Yes, Nick. She will protect her. I know her. She will.”

He dragged a hand through his hair. “Jesus Christ, June.”

Seconds ticked by, long ones.

She went to humor, then, desperate to lighten the mood and access him, somehow. “She'll play on the beaches in Canada. Y'know, when the igloos melt.” The rank disappointment on his face was, well, icy - her sad comedy getting her nowhere. She bowed her head, almost defeated, searching for the right words. “She’ll be loved, Nick. I _know_ she’ll be loved.”

She desperately wanted him to understand. She'd chosen Hannah, but she’d also chosen him, in a way, with this maybe-doomed decision that she couldn’t begin to reconcile or explain. Eventually, she held her head up and tried anyway. “In three years Hannah could be Eden, Nick. Think about that. What if Holly were nine? What would you do? Call me stupid or naive but I will not leave her in this place.” It was as much truth as she could muster and another tear silently slid down her cheek.

She slayed him every time, with her honesty and vulnerability and strength. He rolled his eyes and gave her a bitter smile. “You’re not naive.”

She sobbed around a laugh, relieved that he had calmed, for now.

He looked to the ceiling. She’d given up one daughter for the other, and would probably die for either. How could he condemn her? And, w _hy was he so surprised?_ he wondered. Hannah had always been the issue, since the beginning. At the Globe, and before, in their soft whispers above the garage when he’d told her about Joshua and she’d talked about Hannah. It’s not like he didn’t know.

She gathered herself, wiping her cheeks and tilting her face upwards toward him, holding out her hand. “Come with me.”

“Why?” he asked, exhausted with her, the Waterfords, drownings - everything that was Gilead.

“Please,” she whispered, her eyes softening.

His hand met hers, anyway. Of course it did.

She brought him through the cellar and up a stairway into a hallway of the school. It was grey in the winter’s bleakness were it not for Nick’s phone providing glimmered guidance. No matter, she’d already memorized the route in the few hours she had been there.

She led him down a hallway, walls lined with black and white class photos of yesteryear, hopeful faces looking to a future they could never have imagined would be Gilead. Finally, they came to a door which opened into what was once the teachers’ staff room.

The warm temperature and ambient light took a moment for him to process. It was clean and cheerful with three tall windows along one wall and several collections of sofas and chairs. The blinds were down and thick curtains were drawn around them to block the light from being seen from the outside. It could be a large living room if not for the aging printer in the corner and the inboxes that lined a wall.

“Where are we?”

“Concord Academy,” she said and smiled. “The President of Harvard went here.”

He looked at her warily. “Right. And how the fuck is he going to help?”

“Her.”

He scoffed because what the fuck did he know about fancy boarding schools or Harvard?

“She’s a wife, now, Nick. She knows Serena and Lawrence, and his wife, Ellie.”

He exhaled, exasperated,“Jesus, June. You think a bunch of teachers are gonna save your ass?” He wiped a hand over his mouth. “There’s only so much I can do.”

Stubborn to a fault, her eyes hardened. “Nick, listen to me, we are Gilead, like it or not. If we don’t fight them, who will?" and she paused searching for words. “I just... I’ll get Hannah out, or die trying.”

“Better money is option two.”

She smiled sadly, nodding slowly in the way that she always does, understanding his calculations. Eventually, she faced him, determined, her jaw set. "Well, then, at least I’ll rest in peace.”

He held her eyes, both of them recalling their wrenching conversation in the Waterford’s kitchen after Jezebels. He was out of words and out of cards and horrified at the prospect that she would die in this place and almost welcome it.

“Come.” She brought him to the sofa, sitting him down and turning to face him. “NIck, this room is Mayday. Lawrence told me that there are hundreds of people, even high-ranking commanders like him, who are working to overthrow Gilead. They’re just waiting for the right time to act.” As she spoke it occurred to him that the last person who tried to convert him to a cause was Commander Pryce.

His head dropped back and he looked to the ceiling. She waited for him to say something, anything, hoping - desperately hoping - that he’d work with her… with them.

Instead, he sighed and said, “I’m fucking hungry.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smut comes next. 
> 
> For those who love detail (I know you're out there): 
> 
> \- I always assumed the Waterfords lived north of Boston in one of the leafy suburbs like Andover. There are several storied boarding schools in that area... Concord is a ways away but I took some artistic license because...
> 
> \- Drew Gilpin Faust, the first female President of Harvard, did attend Concord Academy when it was all girls and I liked that for this feminist show.
> 
> \- Dearborn is part of the Detroit metro area and has the largest concentration of people with Middle Eastern heritage - 40%. I always thought it would be interesting if the show honored Max's biracial heritage by doing the same for Nick's backstory. Even if the show doesn't, what's fic for if not for making up character backstories, right? 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Lmk how I did.


	4. Molson & Milk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lust and love... and other f*cked up things.

_“Really?”_ she laughed, rolling her eyes, charmed by this complex, quiet man who had somehow wormed his way into her heart with his heroic instincts and boy-band soulfulness. He’d long ago won her over and she couldn’t even begin to explain or rationalize it.

She stood and went to a corner cabinet, returning with a can of Pringles, a package of Peanut M&Ms, a bottle of Molson, and a condom. He watched, amused, despite himself, as she placed them one by one on the coffee table before him. “Mayday has a minibar?” he asked.

“Contraband. Stick with me, boyfriend. Next stop is an underground Ritz.”

He sat back and shook his head with a half-smile. “Too fancy.”

Her eyes danced. “Okay, then, what do you miss? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure I’d give up a pinkie for Nachos Bell Grande right about now.”

He couldn’t quite believe she’d joke about that but answered anyway. “Dunkin'. Chocolate glazed, but my fingers stay put.”

She chuckled, sitting down beside him, closer this time. “Nah, go with Tim Hortons. Those Canadians are _dope_ ,” and she said the last word like a fifteen-year-old surfer, or snowboarder, in this case.

That earned her a real smile. He exhaled. How she could flirt, how he could flirt _with_ her, after sending their baby away, was beyond him.

June had become a living reminder to him of the real world, what they may have been, even, had their worlds randomly collided. Once, during an afterglow moment at The Globe, she’d told him about a road trip she’d taken to see friends at UofM. He’d laughed at her, rolled onto his back and replied that unless she took a wrong turn into a dive bar in Dearborn, they’d never have met. She’d grinned, inched up to his ear and whispered, “I _love_ dive bars,” before going down on him.

He chose the M&Ms, tearing open the package and pouring them into his mouth like a shot, washing it down with half the beer.

“Good?” she asked when he was done.

“Yeah,” he said, idly studying the label, still grumpy but apparently pacified, “breakfast of champions.”

With her trademark boldness, she seized the moment and took the bottle from him, placing it down and she straddled him, settling on his lap. She deliberately placed her thumb on his chin forcing it down, the way he’d done with her countless times. She kissed him with force, her tongue finding his, and he responded in kind, moaning softly into her mouth. One hand found its way into her hair holding her head, the other pressed her body against him. She felt him hardening beneath her and it pleased her, always a mission accomplished for June.

The kiss went on and on, turning a little desperate as they both ignited. It had been at the hospital, after the bombing, since they’d last touched each other like this. She moved from his lips to his neck, easily her second favorite part of him, her tongue making little circles on his soft skin. The intensity of her need for him always amazed her. Never had she fucked anyone as she did with this man, never had she wanted someone so primitively. She’d stopped wondering why... Impending death? Pheromones? Fate? Desperation? Epic love?… _take your pick,_ she thought.

Then, he shocked her. Instead of giving into their mutual need he gripped her hair, forcing her head back. His eyes drilled into her as much as his cock wanted to, then and there and harder than ever, but the stakes were high and he was a fucking mess, his brain swimming with frustration. Sex would make it all worse. 

“Do not play me, June.”

She flashed back, pissed that he’d halted her seduction. “Says the spy.”

“June, I have _never_ fucking lied to you.”

He was right and she had no defense.

Flushed from anger and passion - both of them - he looked away, releasing his hold on her hair and took a long cleansing breath trying to clear his muddled thoughts. After several moments his eyes flickered over her and for the first time he noticed her clothes. Jeans and a blue v-neck sweater, the rise of her engorged breasts revealed, almost indecently, with each breath she took. “Where’d you get these?”

“The place is stocked.”

“You look…” he couldn’t find the words until he did. “You look like before,” and he inched two fingers along the neckline and over the top of her breasts.

She exhaled at his light touch but remembered something. She removed the sweater over her head and he was distracted for a second by her swollen tits overflowing her too-small bra. For months he’d been humbled, awed and epically turned-on, if he was honest, with the knowledge that he was responsible for these changes to her body.

He dragged his eyes away to view the tag of the sweater she was holding up to him. _Old Navy._

 _Christ_ , he thought, rearing his head to the back of the sofa. Gilead may have killed Eden but he had a central role. The nightmares visited him often, images of her floating body and pleading eyes haunting his sleep.

He finally faced her, whispering. “Tell me this was real, June. Lie if you have to,” desperate for validation, any rationale really, for what they’d done to Eden, for why he had resented this innocent girl so much.

“It’s real, Nick. _Is_.”

“‘Fantasy.'” he said quietly, quoting her.

June had learned harsh lessons about the male ego in Gilead - lessons she’d never wished to learn, but she would not lie to this man who had never lied to her, and who would die for her in a heartbeat. Maui _was_ a fantasy, but what they had together, here and now, was not.

He searched her face, needing more from her, desperate even. She nodded slightly in understanding and gave him a reassuring smile, the kind she always did when his feelings of powerlessness threatened to overwhelm him.

She looked down at her hands and crept them up his chest before ducking under his jaw, her lips feathering over his pulse.

“First, I wanted you,” she whispered.

She sat back up and buried her fingers into his hair and turned to the other side. This time she took his earlobe between her teeth and bit him, just short of painful.

“Then, I needed you,” she said, still whispering.

Finally, she faced him, giving him as much as she could through her eyes. She put one hand to the side of his face and kissed him gently, almost chaste, withdrawing just far enough to look at him directly with all the honesty her possessed. “And then I loved you. _Love_ you. It’s all of those. Everything.”

He exhaled sharply. It was what he needed, a reaffirmation of the previous night when he’d held Holly but with a stronger voice and certitude that only June was able to give him.

He heaved forward, pushing her off his lap, standing her in front of him. He quickly unbuttoned and unzipped, shoving her jeans down with her underwear while she removed her bra.

His breath caught when he saw her hairlessness, and his eyes flew to hers in question. She shrugged and smiled, all sexy irony. “The minibar has razors.”

He groaned at the thought of her grooming for him and for a second he thought he might come on the spot like a teenager. Instead, he grabbed her around the waist forcing her down to the sofa bracing her wrists over her head with one hand, and kissed her roughly, his lips engulfing hers, his hot tongue finding hers skillfully as his free hand found her breast, desperate to feel their fullness. She moaned sharply at his touch, too sharply, and he broke the kiss in response, always sensitive to her reactions, and looked down at her in question.

“Fondle at your own risk. The handpump here sucks.”

The noise he made was some combination or a groan and a chuckle and he ducked into her shoulder, breathing her in, willing some self-control because for some primal reason this was maybe the hottest thing he could imagine, fucking her with her breasts filled with milk for the baby they’d made.

He released her wrists and carefully cupped both of her over-full breasts, burying his face between them. He kissed her cleavage, tasting her scent, her sweat. She gasped at his touch, her breasts sensitive, and her fingers tangled in his hair. “Nick,” she called, overwhelmed.

He ignored her and propped himself up on an elbow to look down at her. She looked better than she had in months, cheeks glowing and pink, lips swollen, blond waves fanned out around her. _So fucking beautiful_ , he thought.

He looked down as he slowly took his thumb and forefinger and surrounded her nipple, glancing up at her, her chest moving in synch with her shallow breaths, giving him wordless approval. He gently pinched her and watched mesmerized as three drops of milk came out and rolled down her skin. He bent down and licked her clean.

It might have been the most singularly intimate moment either of them had ever shared and she realized she was almost dizzy with want. Again, she pulled at his hair trying to bring him to her. “Now, Nick, please.”

Instead, he wordlessly traveled down her tummy as his hand found her center, now bare, and he exhaled, amazed all over again. Separating her folds, she jolted and cried out when he touched her. She was so wet it was almost embarrassing and his fingers carefully spread her juices around her slippery folds.

He readjusted her, bending her knees around him before slipping two fingers inside just as his tongue found her clit. She gasped with relief, arching up to him, an arm bending over her face because it was almost too much to watch him, fully dressed, devouring her naked body.

It took less than a minute. He had to brace her hips in the end when she bucked upwards, her inner muscles contracting around his fingers. She sobbed his name as she came.

He rode out her orgasm, slowing his movements in time with her, withdrawing his hand, his lips moving to tenderly caress her hairless mons pubis.

When she came back to earth and caught her breath, she sat up, dragging him to her, and kissed him open mouthed and carnal, tasting herself and vestiges of the beer.

“Get your fucking clothes off.”

He smiled, feverish himself, and erotically charged, always, by his power to do this to her.

He obliged, standing, his clothes a black pile on the floor within seconds, but when he reached for the condom she grabbed it out of his hands.

“My job,” she said, tearing open the pack.

“Christ, June,” he groaned, “hurry.”

Her vivid blue eyes were coy and screamed sex when she looked up at him as her fingers surrounded the base of his cock and slowly, too slowly, moved to the tip. Her thumb found the precum and she spread it deliberately over the head but when she tried to take him into her mouth he grabbed her hair, pulling her back.

“I won’t last.”

She almost laughed and let him get his way, this once. _Small mercies_ , he thought, though for a second he thought he might come just watching her small pale hands on him, stretching the latex over the head and rolling it down his length.  

In one swift move he backed her down onto the sofa, plunging inside her, stretching her and she cried out, amazed at his animalistic strength and aggression. He grunted, almost losing it, feeling her surrounding him, her warmth. He halted abruptly, veins straining as he buried his face into her, desperate to keep it together.  

When he finally began moving it was hard and fast, almost punishing, and she threw her arm around his neck in an effort to hold on. She always came faster the second time and, blessedly, this was no different. She went over the edge within seconds, gasping, nails digging into his back as she dissolved. He was gone, just seconds later, with a guttural sound and a thrust so deep she was sure he hit her cervix. She stayed with him as he became erratic and gentler until he was finally still.

They remained tangled together, perspiration covering both of them. The condom made it easier for him to remain inside her and he was grateful, never wanting to leave, terrified for her life and her future. He raised himself slightly and pushed the wet tendrils of hair away from her cheeks and forehead.

“Hey,” he said simply.

“Hey.”

It was always like this for them after they’d fucked, the feeling that it might be their last time, that all the second chances and near misses would eventually give way to the wrath of Gilead. This time the fear almost overwhelmed him.

“I just needed you to be safe,” he said, eyes bright with unshed tears.

She cupped his face, tearing up too, understanding and loving him, pained that she couldn’t give him this one simple thing.

“I know.” There wasn’t anything to say. She’d made her choice.

They silently stayed in each other’s arms for several minutes until he reached over to his clothes and found his watch. “I gotta go, June.”

She nodded, sitting up and wrapping herself in the blanket she’d slept with the prior night. She watched him dress, quietly enjoying his masculine beauty.

“Is Rita okay?” she finally asked.

“No. She’ll probably kill you herself if she ever sees you again.”

She cocked her head to the side. It’s not what she meant.

“She'll be fine. She’s got too much on those two. They’ll put it all on Ofjo-,  _Emily,_  somehow. Her rap-sheet makes it pretty easy,” he said pointedly, thinking of Holly as he buttoned his shirt.

“Where’s Serena?”

“Eye fucking Lawrence, last I checked.”

She digested that, the pieces falling into place, realizing that Lawrence must know her from before.

He watched the wheels turning in her brain. “Does he have a plan?”

“Yeah, same as mine, I think,” she said and gave him a look that hinted of shame. “Recruitment.”

He held her look. He was no longer angry, mostly resigned. “It’s suicide, June.”

“This is war, Nick. Fight with me. Please.”

After a long moment, he nodded.

Of course he did.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tim Hortons is the Dunkin' Donuts of Canada and is pretty iconic. And, get this fun fact, there IS a Tim Horton's in Dearborn... so Nick would know it. (And, obv, Michigan and Canada share a border.)
> 
> This chapter was SO hard to write. Trying to figure out the emotional temperature of June and Nick post-Holly was challenging. A hat tip to all the smart members of https://www.reddit.com/r/TheHandmaidsTale/ - many of that community's speculations made it into this chapter.
> 
> Smut takes me FOREVER to write and it always feels a little, well, exposing, particularly in this chapter b/c of the nursing issue. 
> 
> Anyway, please lmk how I did. Comments, kudos, etc. keep me writing.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
